Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: How Can Jocko Not Step Up and Talk About America's Short-Comings?

Episode Date: February 9, 2026

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This is the Jocko Underground Podcast number 200 with Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. We have been issued questions from you all, the troops in the field. And we are going to try and provide answers if possible, courses of actions to follow, or at least some recommendations of maintaining the path. Yeah. So that's what we got. Let's get into it. All right.

First question. A long time listener. I've read all your books. I've supported the underground. And now I have a crisis of faith as to whether you are. complete and utter bullshit. In the grand scheme, it doesn't matter. We all have flaws, you include it.

But given what's happened in the United States with the killing of two citizens, the government responding with pure propaganda, e.g. no right to possess a weapon, domestic terrorists. And your role in promoting and platforming this very government, when do you feel some ownership and step up

and address this? Your response to rating another country to capture the leader, Venezuela, caused me to, to end sponsorship of your underground podcast. Your failure to do anything to address this mess will make it clear that you don't represent extreme ownership. And worse, your silence makes your sacrifices

in your younger days worthless if we lose ours, our freedom in the process. Okay, well, first of all, thanks for the support. Much appreciated over the years. And hopefully we've taken away something positive from the books and the podcast and whatnot. And you are correct. We all have flaws, me included, of course.

And there are a lot of things going on in the country right now that are very polarizing. A lot of things going on in the country that are very polarizing. I am, I don't aim to be one of those things that's very polarizing. My goal as a person and as a leader in any organization that I'm in, whether I was in when I was in the SEAL teams, whether I'm in business or a citizen in the country, my goal, first. and foremost has always been to try and find common ground and and bring some unity to various situations and one of the most profound places that I learned in that lessons was when I was running the advanced training command for the suit for the west coast seal teams sometimes a seal platoons would have infighting because because there's all kinds of things to infight about when

you're in a seal platoon different techniques different procedures different postures, you have different personalities in the platoon. And if the platoon leadership and the platoon themselves, because once you have two divergent leaders, then they get their own teams within the team. And if they start going at each other, the platoon can't find the common ground. And things fall apart.

And so the extremist political sides of our country do a great job of capitalizing on people's egos and on people's fear. and anger and resentment and other kind of reactive emotions. You ever notice like someone can say something to you and it will cause an emotional reaction? Like just that's just the way it is. So that's not good.

And if you pull the string on what's causing that emotion, a lot of times it's ego. But if it doesn't cause, if it doesn't cause an emotion, one of the fear, resentment or anger, a lot of times it will just trigger your ego. So I've always been very cautious about that. And if, you know, you've read all my books, which is awesome, I thank you.

My default mode is to detach from emotions and detach from chaos and detach from mayhem and try and understand things and be balanced. So another thing you might recognize from reading all my books and listening to thousands of hours worth of podcasts that I've said over and over again, along with detachment and emotional detachment and putting your ego in check is one of the most underrated tools of being a leader is listening so I try and listen and assess what's going on and quite frankly in this every single day there are events taking place that I could go through great effort to address these things right whether it's riots or killings or arson

or arson or protests or assaults or bombings, right? And all these things are on different scales, some bigger than others. And depending on what side of the media you're on, they're either completely amplified or completely ignored. But the thing is you've got to remember is each one of these things has their own little nuances and their own little details. And you could analyze them for years. And I just don't live in that world.

I'm not monitoring the news 24 hours a day, pouring through reports trying to decipher the details of countless news stories. I don't, I have other things that are happening, right? I have businesses. I have hundreds of employees. I have vast projects and tasks and charities that I work with and teams and family, of course.

And, you know, I work 12 to 16 hours a day. And I'm not, none of my work revolves around, being a political commentator. I'm a American working man. I can also tell you

and I would probably gather that you know, that you might be able to sense that the media and the political spin is not healthy for you. It creates divisiveness and hatred between our citizens. And it kind of does that on two levels. One level is because they want division

and the other level is on the media side, they want you to click on the stories and they want you to share stories. And there's no faster way to get someone to share a story than to make them emotional about the story. So if you love it, you share it. If you hate it, you share it. And so that's what they're looking for. So they're feeding you the most emotion that they can give you. And my take is I don't want to add to that unless I think I can offer a perspective that some people might not see. So I stayed attached so I don't get caught up in either side's propaganda. And in the meantime, of course, I mean, I see what's going on.

I'm not living in a cave. So I see things that are happening. And I see multiple sides to all these different issues. I see where both sides are right and I see where both sides are wrong. I see both sides make mistakes. I see both sides make sense and I also see both sides act crazy. So, you know, what do you specifically ask about? Oh, two citizens were killed.

That's absolutely awful. That's terrible. It was really horrible to watch. And those officers were not trained to be properly detached in very stressful situations. And the two citizens that were killed were somehow led to believe that it was their duty to go out and aggressively interfere with our armed federal law enforcement, which is not good. So here's what I can tell you. These are human beings.

These are human beings that have been put in stressful situations. And human beings in stressful situations do what human beings do in stressful situations. So when you mix these ingredients together, you're going to get bad things. So there you go. Did I progress this, you know, argument? meant any further? No, I didn't. I told you that humans act like humans. You tell one group of humans that there's evil people coming in and you need to stop them. And then you put those people in with other people that are federal agents that are executing what they've been told to do and they

think they're right to do it because they're getting rapists and murders out of the country. And so they're trying to do their job. So now you have these two opposing forces and you're going to mix them together and guess what's going to happen? Bad things are going to happen. So I, I wouldn't encourage that. I would de-escalate that on both sides. So, you know, there's one. America took out Maduro. And if you're on the side that says, hey, that's not of our business.

We don't have the right to do that. Cool. I can see your point. And if you're a person that thinks Maduro was a tyrannical leader that's killed thousands of Venezuelans and imprisoned anymore and conducted mass extrajudicial executions, And on top of that, he's facilitated the influx of drugs into our country that's killed hundreds of thousands of people and that the people of Venezuela celebrated his removal. And so you think it's a good move? I can see that side too.

So I can see. This is history taking progress. History isn't perfect. History isn't nice. History doesn't know whether it's going to be right or wrong, by the way. You know, how do those things turn out? I don't know. I hope that Venezuela transitions well.

It seems like it is. There's not a civil war happening. There's not a power vacuum that's being filled. The infrastructure has been left in place. In fact, it's being improved. They're doing something that we didn't do in Iraq. Remember in Iraq? We went in and we eliminated the entire bath party and fired 400,000 soldiers.

And then what did they have? No jobs. And what did they do? They found a job being insurgents. So it seems like we did a little bit better in Venezuela. I certainly hope it turns out a lot better. I hopefully they this transition takes place and they hold elections and they move towards a nice situation where they have freedom and democracy that's what I hope for can I guarantee that no can

anyone guarantee that nope no they can't in Minnesota I don't know when you wrote me this this question it can't be too far too long ago but currently it seems as if local law enforcement is now cooperating with federal law enforcement to affect a turnover of illegal criminal aliens from the state prisons to federal law enforcement, which means that the federal law enforcement isn't going out door to door and doing raids to try and capture these guys, which means that the citizens aren't protesting directly, which means everything has calmed down a lot. Now, could things flare up? Yeah, they could flare up. I don't know. That's why, you know, when people think that they,

know everything about what's going on, they don't. And I am also one of those people that don't know what's going on. Or let me rephrase that. We might know what's going on, but we don't know what's going to happen. Time will tell. Time will tell. And listen, you know, as far as this podcast, we've had people from all different backgrounds and all different political beliefs on this podcast. We've had candidates from Democrats. We've had Republican candidates, Democratic candidates, independent candidates. We've had everybody on this thing. I don't platform any specific political agenda. A lot of times I have veterans on.

Veterans tend to lean more conservative. So yeah, I've probably had more of them on. But I've also had people from all over the dial. So that to me is just, and anyone's welcome, by the way. I've invited all kinds of different people. So that's kind of open. And you know, you kind of kind of think the closing thing is like, we're going to lose our freedoms and stuff like that. America has been through some really horrible and divisive times.

And it doesn't really seem like it because you read them, you may or may not have read them in a book. And they don't feel as real as they feel right now to you. However, whatever situation you're in in life and these things seem so. like drastic and crazy. But this is part, this is American history. America, shit gets wild in America. Shit goes bad and wrong in America. Bleeding Kansas, you ever heard of that?

1850s. It was pro-slavery versus anti-slavery guerrilla war. And then, I mean, look, we all know the Civil War, where we literally went to war with each other, 600,000 people killed. Okay, so once that was over, it was over though. No, they assassinated Lincoln. Okay.

Well, then once Lincoln was assassinated, maybe it was over then. No. What about the Memphis Massacre, 1866? Whites in Memphis killed a bunch of black union veterans. I've talked about this in this podcast before. Like all the free blacks that made it to the north, they all fought. and it was a big number. It was like 10% of the Union Army.

And when the war was over, okay, going down to Memphis. And imagine the white supremacist killing black union veterans killed 50 of them. Wouldn't that spark something? By the way, the same thing happened in New Orleans, like 35 blacks were killed there. What about the Wilmington coup and massacre where the whites, The white supremacists, they had a coup, meaning they took over the government. Successfully, by the way, killed a bunch of black people and took over the government. And by the way, this is, this is what, 40 years after the Civil War.

So isn't that the end of the world? 1906, Atlanta race riot. Man, it took a long time for this racial stuff. We think the racial stuff is horrible right now. The Red Summer, 1919. Chicago, D.C., Elaine, Arkansas, 250 black people were just killed and thousands were displaced. Did you hear me when I said 1919? That's just the last century.

That's the century I was born in. Here's one you might have heard of Tulsa Race Riot, Tulsa Race Massacre. No one really knows the exact numbers, whether it was dozens or hundreds or maybe thousands. But I do know that like 1,300 homes and businesses were burned to the ground. The hell is that? Isn't that the end of the, must that be the end of the union? Now we're here. 1935, Hewley Long assassinated.

The labor disputes, you ever heard of the Battle of Blair Mountain where dozens of American workers were killed by the federal government? Did that start spark off a civil war? Did everyone, no, no, no, no, we didn't overthrow the government. government then what about when Jim Jim Crow laws kicked in next do we overthrow the government then no no we didn't what about the late 60s and early 70s when now the black Panthers and the black liberation army and the Sivinese liberation army what about when they were murder executing police officers like a dozen of them in America did that we did

that was that the what sparked it oh no no it didn't We're here. What about when they killed MLK, Martin Luther King? What about when they killed him? When the personified symbol of freedom for inequality for all men, what about when he got assassinated? Oh, no, we're still here. Well, you know, what about when they killed JFK? No, we're still here.

What about RFK? No, we're still here. What about race riots in Watts, Detroit, and Newark? Massive, crazy race riots. Is that the end of America? No, we're still here. What about the weather underground? Remember when they bombed people and killed people?

Leftists? Oh, well, what about when at Kent State American soldiers killed four students that were protesting? Was that it? Dude, was that it? No, we're still here. What about Ruby Ridge or the Oklahoma City bombing? Did those things spark the revolution, the Civil War here? No, they didn't.

What about the Fort Hood jihadist that went on a shooting spree and killed 13 American soldiers on a base? Is that when we decided we were going to export everyone? No, we didn't. No, we didn't. What about the Charleston church when the white supremac went in and massacred a bunch of black kids? that were in a church. Did that send us over to the edge? No, it didn't.

What about when the guy came out and tried to kill a bunch of Republican peak guys, Republican government representatives that were out playing baseball. Did that start it? No, actually it didn't. What about the BLM rights? I hope you remember those. Was that the end of America? No, it wasn't.

What about January 6th? Was that the end of America? No, it wasn't. What about Rachel Morin? who's a mother of five who's raped and murder by an illegal immigrant from El Salvador is that when we decided it was all over

Nope we're still here Jocelyn Nungerre murdered by two illegals from Venezuela Was that the final straw? No it wasn't Lake and Riley nursing student

brutally murdered by an illegal immigrant Was that the final straw? No it wasn't Irene Zerutska If you haven't seen that video, she got, who was sitting on a bus, binding her own business, looking at her phone, got stabbed in the neck, murdered because she's a white woman. Was that the final straw?

No. Nope, it wasn't. Is this stuff good? No, it's absolutely not. Is this stuff polarizing? It absolutely can be. Is it the end of America? No, it's not.

This stuff has been going on since the beginning. beginning of America. And we have our differences and we're going to have problems, but I am not going to add to them. I will help when I can. But America is a very strong. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to jaco underground.com and subscribe. and we're doing this, we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms so we are

not subject to their control. And we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko podcast, which will remain as is free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors. And we're doing it so we can give you more control, more interactive. more direct connections better communications with us and to do that we are we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us so thank you it's jocco underground

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